Saturday, January 26, 2008

Friday night Felipe, John, Erica, Simon, and I attempted to meet at a Mexican restaurant, but it had closed, which made it pretty hard to find. It would've been really great if the directions we got from the internet had mentioned that the place had closed over a year ago. John and I are both dying for Mexican food, but since I haven't even seen a single Mexican here, I have a feeling that we are going to experience continued disappointment. After a meal at what seemed like the next best thing, we proceeded with phase 2 of John's mission to find some bar in Mitte that he really likes but can't seem to remember its location. Like phase 1, this resulted in lots of aimless wandering despite John's high degree of confidence that the bar was just around the corner.

The hookers were out in full force, and if that isn't weird enough, get this: They wear heavy winter jackets and then have corsets over top of the jackets to let you know who they are. This looks even more peculiar than you might imagine.

We ended up at very smoky, but cool bar with good music where I drank too much, accidentally used the (unlabeled) women's bathroom (some Germans were kind enough to tell me afterwards), and ultimately, very reluctantly returned most of the Augustiner that I had consumed, if you know what I mean. The bar was pretty crowded when we got there, but they pulled out some folding chairs for us, which was very nice and/or weird.

In other good news, the bar used my favorite beer glass in the entire world (the Willibecher) and we had to be at school at 10:30am Saturday morning for our first practical work malting session. As much fun as it was to weigh out some barley for 5 minutes and load it into a steeper (which wasn't even going to get water until the last group got their barley in), I can think of a lot of times other than 10:30am on a Saturday when I could have/would have preferred to do this, but whatever. I'd like to thank Simon for ensuring that a Kebab found its way into my barren stomach before I began the journey home early Saturday morning, and Erica for navigating said journey. Otherwise, I surely would have faired worse than John Smith in Spain.

Posted by
John Bryce

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